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Here is a hornbeam to show what a good one looks like, even though it still has many years work on the branches - Peter Tea gives scale to this chunky tree. We'll keep looking I think Frank till we find one that will fit through your door !

Hi all, just had a little play with Owens workshop juniper and came up with this:

It keeps the trunk angle, two branches from the original and a spiraling shari to hide prune marks but also add more movement to the trunk, stubs of pruned branches made into small jin to complement the shari. Below is a pine i did last year as bunjin and a juniper that has similar trunk and live vein details, again a literati. I see this tree as a mixture of the two, then a nice free form shallow pot.

Even though we are getting a little cold snap several trees had started waking up. My second one that needed repotting was a little shohin trident maple root on rock.

Robert had 3 of these this summer with leaves about 1cm across from multiple defoliations in every growing season but the trees had a solid mass of twigs because of this. I thinned hard, removing about 75% of the branches and then wired the bits that were left to give a basic branch structure. From these branches the foliage will be grown in layers.

The pot is one of Gordon Hunts and it picks up the texture and colour of the ibigawa rock perfectly. This japanese volcanic rock has chippings of other rocks imbedded in it and incredible texture (that can be increased further by dipping it in acid). The flecks in the pot and the rustic slope to the pot rim fit the planting, and there is a little room to grow an extra inch or two of ramification on the tree.

I sieved the deciduous soil mix to a medium grade for potting and top dressed with fine akadama. Now the tree sits under the grow light with the kiyohime (which has been pruned very hard to induce inner buds). I've only left a single inner bud or two on all the lower and middle branches to force backbudding.

I thought you might be interested in my two recent
repots, I had been looking for a while at these two collected Hawthorns, and
thinking they would be better if the pots were swopped about, the bent trunk
into the round pot and vice versa, so this weekend I got around to doing
it.

They are fairly large trees as you can see, (I used the
cut paste pot to help with the scale) they were collected from the Bodmin area
about 12 or more years ago by machine, the bent trunk tree was last repotted in
a 50 -50 mixture of my standard mix and cats litter, and was not doing so
well so a repot was definitely in order.

The straight trunk tree I feel is much more suited to
the oval pot, I've altered the top and reduced it a lot, and I'm now hoping it
will flourish and produce more branches, but it will
need time to recover. The bent trunk tree because of the weak soil mix did not
develop a good fibrous root system and is now the last of my Cats litter
experiments to be repotted into a more suitable soil, certainly the Hawthorns I
put in it have not done well.

My two other larger Hawthorns were repotted last year
using my standard mix, of Sterilized Top soil ,peat moss, and Cornish grit in
equal portions, and both did exceptionally well and won't need repotting this
time, we have used this mix for over 30 years and although we have experimented
with various soils, still find that for us, it works best for developing native
Hawthorn and Blackthorn

What a mild winter - I've been keeping the Kiyohime maple in the coolest place so it stays dormant, but today the buds started swelling and it was time to repot - 21st January - probably the earliest bonsai repot I've ever done, but it could be worth checking your trees regularly now as they are starting to wake up.

Here is a quick picture of the 44" wide acer waking up and repotted

Looking at the above picture the tree is too dense in the middle, and a bit cluttered and untidy. As the roots were pruned sap flow would be minimal so there was a small window for some gentle wiring. Here is the tree a day later with a much better image.

And now it becomes clear how the tree needs to be styled, photoshop makes the perfect image, then i lay one over the other to see what needs cutting off....

job done - the new image will take 2 years to form, a few more years to refine, but the new pot can be ordered ready for next year i think.

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